By Garry Davis (July 27, 1921 – July 24, 2013) who was an international peace activist who created the World Passport, a travel document originally based on Article 13(2), Universal Declaration of Human Rights and on the concept of world citizenship.

As “sovereignty” is defined as “supreme,” “preeminence,” “indisputable sovereign power,” humanity as such enjoys sine qua non such attributes.

Sovereignty therefore has passed historically and legally from the nation-state to Humanity.

The very Universal Declaration of Human Rights in its first article verifies and mandates each and every human as a fundamental unit of humanity in toto:

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

Moreover, the UDHR’s Preamble affirms that:

“whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world…”

Sages and prophets, scientists [2] and artists of all fields [3] have from time immemorial prophesied that Humanity one day would enter the Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Wisdom and the Age of Unity. Moreover, from the Decalogue through the 1215 Magna Carta, the 1776 Declaration of Independence, the 1789 Declaration de l’Homme et du Citoyen, the 1789 U.S. Bill of Rights, the 1914 Atlantic Charter, the 1945 Nuremberg Principles, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1953 Ellsworth Declaration (of World Government), and the 1974 Statute of the World Court of Human Rights, humanity has arrived, not without giant trials and tribulation, at the birth of the Age of Sovereign legitimacy and legitimate planetary citizenship.

In addition, having entered the Nuclear Age in 1945, when destructive power has risen from relative to absolute, moreover becoming genocidal, humanity itself became potentially a global target of the nation-state war system, carried over from the largely agricultural 18th and 19th centuries.

In brief, if humanity dies, so does the human race including all so-called fictional nation-states.

Therefore humanity per se has entered the prophetic Age of Legitimate Sovereignty.

Moreover, “Crimes against humanity” cited in the Nuremberg Principles, for the first time in judicial history, posited humanity as a reality and potential defendant. [4]

Thus, under total threat of attack and possible elimination by the anarchic nation-state system, [5] Humanity, as an existent fact, has achieved, as of 1945, a de facto and per se legitimate sovereign status vis-a-vis the war-dominated nation-state world.

In strictly legal terms, as of 1945, threatened by the obsolete national dysfunctional war system, humanity became a potential “plaintiff” beginning with the Nuremberg Trials following World War II, requiring legal defense. The nuclear “gun,” in verifiable and judicial fact, was and is pointing directly at it: a “global felony.”

In short, if humanity can be wiped out via nuclear weaponry, it is therefore obliged to defend itself legally as a potential victim. [6]

Thus, for the first time in juridical history, an indictment of “Crimes Against Humanity” entered international jurisprudence. A world court of human rights adjudicating world law is already mandated in the UDHR beginning with articles 6 to 9.

In turn, as humanity by definition is composed of all humans, each human claiming, as an inalienable right, the addition of world citizenship, becomes, and is legitimately, also a micro-global plaintiff vis-a-vis the national war system under the sovereign protection of world law.

Humans in society on whatever level become citizens and citizens form governments.

Or else inalienable rights of political choice are meaningless.

For it is only to protect these that individuals establish a social and political order, carefully defined and always at the consent of the governed. [7]

The aware individual, therefore, faced with a worldly disorder, has first to declare and affirm his or her dynamic political identification with his/her human community.

Also, in declaring ourselves citizens of the world community in which we currently live, we are affirming that essentially we are our own governors.

The individual affirmation and registration of world citizenship therefore is the first step toward realization of human rights for all, the realistic path to world peace. Because it is world humans legally bonding with fellow humans for their individual and collective survival, well-being and happiness.

In essence, we are certifying our innate and inalienable sovereignty as humans in charge of our own destiny.

This is the essence of the democratic principle and precisely where true sovereignty exists, is maintained and prevails for one and all.

The process is in full progress and has been since January 1, 1949. [8]

The benefits accruing to a sovereign humanity almost defy the boldest imagination.

Released from the strangling entanglements of internal planetary war, a giant leap forward in civic and economic benefits for a world citizenry would automatically ensue. Such items are already mandated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights agreed upon by every member of the impotent and defective United Nations. Protection of Earth’s environment itself would be the primary and immediate task.

The greatest advancement, however, would be on the spiritual or consciousness level, already announced by such enlightened humans as Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, Lao-Tse, Vyasa, Diogenes, Socrates, Theilhard de Chardin, Plato, Thoreau, T. Paine, Gandhi, Einstein, H. G. Wells, Schweitzer, Buckminster Fuller, Martin Luther King, Jr., Emery Reves, and on and on, when the metaphysical development of our species would take a giant leap into realms only imagined today.

Finally, in the cosmic sense, Humanity is but a speck of matter in a timeless universe.

And yet, IT IS HERE AND NOW and WE ARE IT!

That is why we must survive and endure.

______________________________

Random House Collegiate Dictionary

Einstein: “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move to higher levels.”

Charlie Chaplin: “Charlot” for instance

(c) Crimes against humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.

The 18th, 19th centuries witnessed the increasing dominance of the nation-state system in a largely agricultural world, pre-technological, pre-electronics, pre-nuclear and pre-space.

Luis Kutner was one of the first to recognize the absolute need for the principle of habeas corpus to be raised to the global level since arbitrary detention, first achieved under the Magna Carta in 1215, was being violated throughout the nation-state system due to the anarchic condition prevailing between all nations by definition.

Example: Ninth Amendment of the US Constitution.

The founding of the International Registry of World Citizens in Paris, by the author and subsequently updated by the World Service Authority (administrative agency of the World Government of World Citizens), in 1954.